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Thursday, 31 January 2013

Film Review: The Princess Bride (1987)

In spite of its age (over 25 years old, seriously? Where's the Blu-Ray box set with extra unusually sized rodent?)
The Princess Bride remains iconic among Fantasy fans and is still unrivalled in
the affections of its fans.

Blatantly but fondly mocking the fantasy adventure genre, The
Princess Bride boasts a princess, an evil prince, treachery, sword-fights, pirates, mountain-climbing, giant rats, flaming swamps, near total death, a
medicine man, and much more. Including a bit of kissing.

"Inconceivable."

UTTERLY BRILLIANT

Set to the back drop of the fabulous Peter Falk reading a
story to Fred Savage ("in my day TV was called books"), the story revolves around
the love of farm boy Westley (Cary Elwes) for a girl with the silly name
Buttercup (Robin Wright) and a whole thing about marrying a Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon) that we all hate. Boo.
Hiss.

This film has spawned almost as many over used and still not
tired quotes as the Monty Python films thanks to utterly brilliant and witty
scripting by William Goldman, who adapted from his own novel. It also managed fantastic things without much budget. By simply
running around on mountains and hills a lot we never really question that this
is a fantasy film, it must be, nothing else has so many trees.

"They're kissing again. Do we have to read the kissing parts?"

HUGELY ENTERTAINING

Other casting
highlights include Andre the Giant as pretty much himself in period
costume, but technically Fezzik, Christopher Guest as Count Rugen, Peter Cook as a clergyman, Billy Crystal as Miracle Max, Mel Smith as an
albino, Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya... heck, there are no casting lowlights.

The film succeeds in being hugely entertaining as a fantasy
adventure, hugely successful as a parody of fantasy adventure and one of the
most re-watched, quoted, memorable and well-loved movies of fantasy fans
everywhere. It's the other reason people of a certain age wanted to learn to fence (Star Wars' glowing swords up against fighting left-handed). It's why the recent remake of Three Musketeers
is actually much funnier than you think ("Apologise to my horse, Buttercup" / "As
you wish").